To Flip or Not to Flip

It starts like this. This this.

Sometimes at one time or another - at a once upon a time time - the times you are living in are trying times.

Indeed. Conflicted. Embedded. Problematic.

All of the obvious goes without saying and you know what I mean. If you don't, I only wish you did 'cause I not saying.

Some of the others of you may or may not know that those of us here in San Francisco are holding our breaths - not even turning blue - and wearing our hearts on our sleeves without bleeding.

A Green has made it to the mayoral runoff against a wolf in Democrat's clothing! Matt Gonzalez will or will not be mayor by the time you probably read this and I'll be breathing again and bleeding again. And against all of this I am Raw already. Like a skeleton with all those pulsing veins and meat but no skin to keep it all hidden and warm.

So imagine me hearing that the Yahoo holiday party (yeah, That Yahoo) has hired The Flips (yeah, Those Flaming Lips) to entertain them.

Ohhhhh...

I know this because a friend works for them and his partner works with me. She told me and that's when I Ohhhhh-ed. So, when she called me that night to tell me where it was and to go ahead and wear "something nice" and come on down, I was gonna.

I mean heck - I could really use some of that kind of fun right now y'know? Of course you don't. Well, maybe You do.

Another guy I know worked for Askjeeves.com back in The Day. They had Elvis Costello and the Attractions play at their company party one year and though H was almost as excited to tell me as he was to go, my reaction was not what he expected. I thought, well that was the end of Elvis. Again.

This was before Burt Bacharach. Before Austin Powers. I rest my case.

And when Wayne did the Hewlett-Packard ads last year, I cringed a little but laughed mostly. After all, maybe The Lips are just irreverent enough and referential enough to make that surreality very very contemporary.

Maybe. But somehow, these days and this holiday party made the maybe maybe not.

So,I stayed at home and with my dog and thought about The Future. And with a full moon on election night it sure looks pretty bright.

Copyright © 2003 Alice Kenner